This is an update to last Summer’s article on the state of analytics at MLS clubs. The last few months have been a big one for MLS analytics signings. Harvard’s Laurie Shaw was hired by City Football Group, former Opta and SportLogiq employee Sam Gregory took his talents to Ft. Lauderdale, Cory Jez transferred from the Utah Jazz to Austin FC, Nikos Overheul moved to Vancouver after working for StatsBomb and Smartodds, and American Soccer Analysis’ own Sam Goldberg and Kevin Minkus were hired by New York Red Bulls and the Chicago Fire, respectively. Given this, teams are polarizing into the haves and have nots. In this update I’ve dropped the Tier 1.5 “Definitely Know What xG Is“ as teams in that tier moved up.

Last year, Kevin Minkus wrote Soccer Analytics 101 over at MLSsoccer.com where he defined analytics as “using data and statistics to better understand something.” For the purposes of deciding what MLS teams have an analytics staff member the “something” is player recruitment and tactical analysis. I’m talking about using numbers and mathematical models (e.g. xG, xA, g+) to help evaluate transfer targets and team and player performance.

The starting point here is math, not video, although video and the eye test will always be an important step in the process. I’m defining this as separate from sports science, where data and statistics are used to mainly evaluate a team’s own players’ physical performance, things like training loads and injury prevention, although some may argue they shouldn't be separated. Furthermore, it is different from business analytics where data and statistics are used to drive more monetary value for a club, but is not focused on the sporting side. Navid Mashinchi, a former Whitecaps performance analyst, recently wrote about MLS staff levels across these different disciplines.

There is no doubt that MLS staff members wear multiple hats. Just because you have the job title of “data analyst” doesn’t mean you won’t be recruited to film a training session, break down video, or drive new players to Canada to get a visa. Similarly, a sports scientist, video analyst, or performance analyst may spend part of their time looking at statistics as part of their work flow. But there is a difference between using analytics as part of your job and analytics being your job.

A source with a good understanding of the state of MLS data analytics provided an additional definition: “Does the team have some level of custom software?” This raises the stakes a bit—it is not just accessing xG stats from something like Opta/TrueMedia’s Provision, Wyscout, or InStat, but building something yourself.

MLS released a list of analytics practitioners at each club, but some clubs were not listed and many were obviously not primarily analytics staff, such as a head coach. So, based upon public knowledge and some private communications, and knowing full well that anyone outside a club can’t really know what is going on inside, here are the tiers of MLS analytics and what we know about each team:

Tier 1: Literally Better Than Liverpool. The clubs use analytics with a full time staff member for recruitment and/or tactical analysis.

Atlanta United: Lucy Ruston, head of technical recruitment & analysis, has been with Atlanta since before Atlanta’s inaugural season joining from Reading. Rushton has extensive experience with soccer analytics and has said her background is in data and has detailed her role numerous times in numerous publications and types. Atlanta United went behind the scenes on how they used data in the signing of Tito Villaba.

Austin FC (moved up from Tier 3): Austin moved up to the top tier after hiring Cory Jez as Director of Sports Science and Analytics. Jez previously was an analytics staffer for the Utah Jazz. He talked previously about how he used basketball data and Toronto’s Devin Pleuler endorsed his transition to soccer.

Chicago Fire (moved up from Tier 3): ASA contributor, 2018 US Soccer Hackathon champion, Chicago native, and SpongeBob SquarePants aficionado Kevin Minkus was hired as the Fire’s Director of Analytics. It was the perfect move for the Fire.

Colorado Rapids: This is an obvious one. Fran Taylor, previously profiled on this site by Mark Asher Goodman, is the assistant general manager and co-founder of an analytics company that was purchased by Arsenal. We don’t hear much about what he and data analyst Matt Pfeffer, a former hockey analyst, are doing, but we can be assured that they are among the analytics teams with the most front office influence in MLS.

Columbus Crew: The Crew’s data analyst Alex Mysiw holds a masters in bioinformatics and has been on staff since 2016. The Crew also utilize Villanova professor Bret Myers as an analytics consultant. Again, we don’t hear much about what the Crew are doing in analytics, but General Manager Tim Bezbatchenko has a long history from his time in Toronto.

LAFC: Max Odenheimer, LAFC’s data analyst, previously published analytics work at StatsBomb. VP of Soccer Operations and Assistant General Manager Will Kuntz has a baseball analytics background and Bob Bradley follows the analytics community. Kuntz and Bradley talked about analytics on the StatsBomb podcast.

Inter Miami (moved up from Tier 3): Last time Inter Miami’s write up was: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Since then, they’ve hired Sam Gregory, a long time leading contributor to the soccer analytics community, as Director of Analytics.

Nashville SC: One of Nashville’s first front office hirings was Oliver Miller-Farrel from Opta, the leading provider of soccer data. He was joined by data analyst and former StatsBomb contributor Caleb Shreve prior to Nashville’s inaugural season.

New England Revolution: Tim Crawford is the longest serving data analyst in MLS. He talked about his role at the 2019 OptaPro Conference in Chicago. Additionally, team video coordinator Todd Kingston joined the Revs from Opta. Revs President Brian Bilello is also an ASA fan.

New York City FC (moved up from Tier 1.5): City Football Group has been on a hiring spree in the analytics space highlighted by the appointment of Laurie Shaw as Lead AI Scientist. Shaw holds a PhD in Astrophysics, was a lecturer at Harvard, and was one of the leaders of The Friends of Tracking project in 2020. In New York, Daniel Fradley is the head of performance analysis for NYCFC and few years back spoke about NYCFC’s use of analytics. NYCFC has also recently advertised for a Football Insights Analyst to be located in New York.

New York Red Bulls (moved up from Tier 1.5): American Soccer Analysis’ Sam Goldberg, of DAVIES fame, was recently hired as a Data Scientist for RBNY. Additionally, Natasha Patel, Head of Performance Analysis, has plenty of experience on the analytics side from her time at Southampton. We don’t know how much analytics support the larger Red Bull network provides, but we do know that Jesse Marsch was passing around ASA articles in the locker room when he was head coach.

Seattle Sounders: Ravi Ramineni, the Sounders’ Vice President(!) of Soccer Analytics and Research has been with Seattle since 2012 when he joined from Microsoft. The Sounders are leaders in the field and host a yearly analytics conference.

Toronto FC: Devin Pleuler is the director of analytics for Toronto. He wrote an analytics column for MLSSoccer.com and worked for Opta prior to joining Toronto. Pleuler is one of the world leaders in the soccer analytics space and routinely presents at conferences such as Sloan and NESSIS. He has also been profiled in The Athletic.

Vancouver Whitecaps (moved up from Tier 1.5): The Whitecaps have previously invested heavily into sports science, hiring multiple PhDs in the field, headed by Ben Sporer including data scientist Johann Windt. While in the last edition of these rankings they didn’t quite make Tier 1 because they seemingly were not doing as much in the recruitment and tactics space, with the hiring of Nikos Overheul from StatsBomb as Director of Recruitment they definitely are now. Having previously worked with analytics darlings Brentford and FC Midtjylland and with great musical taste, Overheul should overhaul the Whitecaps data recruiting set up. He talked about how statistics can be used in soccer in a Tifo Football podcast.
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Tier 2: Watched Moneyball but the Book Was Too Long. Clubs here have a dedicated analytics staff member. However, I am unable to find out much about what they do and there is little to no public work about them. Any of these could easily move up a tier. If you work for one of these clubs feel free to let us know what you are actually doing or that you did, in fact, read Moneyball.

FC Cincinnati (dropped from Tier 1): The Knifey Lions Director of Analytics, Alexander Schram is leaving the club. They recently put out a job advertisement for a new Head of Analytics and, giving them the benefit of the doubt, only drop down one tier as they look for a replacement.

Charlotte FC: Mark Simpson was announced as Head of Analytics on March 2, 2020. Since then no more information about his role has been publicly released. Additionally, Charlotte’s recruitment department features a trio of Dutchmen with data familiarity in Thomas Schaling, Lisandro Isei, and Vincent van Raam.

Philadelphia Union: Dean Costalas is a scout and data analyst for the Union. His background in coaching and business but we do not know what his analytics work entails.

Real Salt Lake: Vahe Tanielian is the director of data analytics for RSL. He has a finance background and his only publicly available analytics publication is related to NBA salaries.
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Tier 3: Game's Not Played on a Spreadsheet, Mate. These clubs do not have an analytics staffer listed on their club site or is otherwise known. These clubs may use contractors or farm out their data recruitment and/or tactical analysis to analytics companies (e.g. StatsBomb, 21st Club, SciSports, SmarterScout, etc.), or prefer to keep their in-house staff hidden for some reason.

DC United (dropped from Tier 2): Stewart Mairs is the technical director at DC United having previously served as director of strategy and analysis. Mairs previously worked for Prozone one of the commercial pioneers in analytics and the USWNT as a performance analyst. DC does not currently employ a dedicated data analyst, though ASA and RBNY’s Sam Goldberg was previously with the club and SmarterScout founder Dan Altman provided analytical services in the past.

FC Dallas (dropped from Tier 2): Fredy Herrera is listed as the data analyst and video coordinator, but the extent of his analytics role, if any, remains unknown. MLSSoccer.com also listed assistant coach Mikey Varas as liaising with their third party analytics provider Kin Analytics.

Houston Dynamo (dropped from Tier 1): The Dynamo do not currently have an analytics employee. ASA’s Sean Steffen was formerly Houston’s data analyst and should be hired by any MLS team needing a data analyst.

LA Galaxy: According to MLS, general manager Dennis te Klose heads up analytics for the Galaxy and talked about it briefly in a November 2020 podcast (skip to 32:20). Rumors have swirled that the Galaxy may begin to invest in analytics, but nothing has been made public and we don’t know if or when this may happen.

Minnesota United: According to MLS, director of player personnel Amos Magee heads up analytics for Minnesota. Minnesota has multiple people contributing in some capacity in the analytics space, but no one person focused on it.

Club de Foot Montréal: According to MLS, assistant sporting director Vassili Cremanzidis heads up analytics for Montreal. He has experience as a performance analyst and his role is described as “managing the first team’s salary cap, as well as preparing and structuring player contracts.”

Orlando City (dropped from Tier 2): According to Orlando City’s scouting director, Ricardo Moreira, the club hired a data analyst in early 2020. The name or role of this person has yet to be announced, so Orlando drops a tier.

Portland Timbers: Portland Timbers do not currently have a data analyst. When in college, one-time ASA contributor Brendan Kent served as their data analyst.

San Jose Earthquakes: According to MLS, head coach Matias Almeyda heads up analytics for the Quakes with help from “an external data science expert and a machine-learning team from a renowned local university” **coughStanford** and previously partnered with Second Spectrum, the same company that now collects tracking data league-wide.

Sporting Kansas City: Ash Wallace is SKC’s tactical analyst and was listed by MLS as their analytics practitioner. We don’t know his analytics expertise, and, given that Peter Vermes is an “analytics guru,” maybe no one else is needed. Current Kansas House of Representatives member Rui Xu was formerly SKC’s performance and statistical analyst.

St. Louis City: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯